Get it? Good-a-day? (I’m sleep deprived).

All jokes aside, today was another brilliant day in the Netherlands. We traveled with public transport to Zaanse Schans — a neighborhood of Zaandam. While the destination was cool, and I will touch on it shortly, the journey there cannot go unwritten. Turns out, public trams cannot always fit 26 people groups during a rush hour. And so, roughly half of us were shutout of the first tram. After getting split up, we met at the central train station and, quite literally, sprinted to the train. We boarded mere seconds before departure.

Arriving in Zaandam, we walked among wooden houses, enormous windmills, and incredible smelling chocolate shops. Despite the continuous downpour, the area was beautiful. We made our way to the tourist hotspot of Zaanse Schans: a collection of windmills, cheese stores, and a traditional wooden clog store. The clogs were surprisingly comfortable, yet I couldn’t see myself walking around in them for some reason. The highlight of the gift stores was the cheese shop we visited. Every sample I tried was out of this world. Another bit of food to mention was the Dutch pancakes. These were thin like a crepe and filled with bacon, cheese, or ham. And yes, syrup was recommended.

The main attraction from an engineering standpoint was the sawmill we visited. Operated by the windmill, the sawmill is able to cut through trees with minor help from humans. It was very interesting to see how the whole thing works. Furthermore, it is still puzzling how the people of the Netherlands were able to construct these windmills around 500 years ago.

After returning to Amsterdam, I went to a small Italian restaurant for dinner. Two interesting things about eating out in the Netherlands is that they will often not allow you to split a bill and they prefer to not touch your credit card during a transaction. Afterwards, I went to a vintage store to try on some clothes. The Netherlands has a huge thrifting culture, which goes along with their strong sustainability motto. I am looking forward to tomorrow and hoping that the rain will clear up when we visit the tulip farm. Have a gouda day!